Students’ piñata mobile phone app is a winner with design judges

An imaginative concept for a fun mobile phone app has earned a pair of students from the University of Northampton a coveted design award.

Graphic Communication students Taylar Wong and Ben Webb, who are both from Northampton, have been selected as category winners in the D&AD New Blood Awards 2018, which recognise creative talent around the world.

They caught the eyes of the judges with two concepts for mobile phone company Giffgaff, which had set a brief for award entrants to come up with a campaign focussing on ‘mutual giving’ that rewarded customers and showed potential customers what they were missing out on.

Taylar said: “Giffgaff asked for either a digital or an in-person experience, and we chose to do both.”

The digital experience Taylar and Ben devised was a Giffgaff Piñata app, which sees players tap their mobile screen to try and demolish a piñata horse. If there are enough hits within a time limit, the players receive prizes from Giffgaff.

The second concept from Taylar and Ben is for a giant, physical piñata at a music festival. Festival goers would hit the piñata, which in turn would generate kinetic energy that could be used to power a mobile phone charging station.

Ben said: “With these sorts of awards there’s always a chance to work with the companies that set the brief, if they like the idea enough and feel it would be feasible to develop. With competition briefs you can go as big and bold as you want, so occasionally it makes it hard to translate these concepts into real-life campaigns.

“If Giffgaff were interested, we’d definitely love to get involved and take the project further.”

This is Ben’s second, and Taylar’s third New Blood Award since they’ve been at the University,

Taylar said: “Despite us winning a D&AD award last year, it still came as a giant shock to see our campaign win this year too.

“It feels great to have won again in what is our final year at University, and it shows that all of our hard work over the past three years has paid off.”

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